


The Dolls' House

by okapi



Series: Spooky & Kooky (the Halloween fics) [10]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dolls, Halloween, Lack of Communication, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, References to Suicide, Suspense, references to murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-08 13:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12255771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: A dolls' house appears at 221b. Holmes & Watson will never be the same.A tale of supernatural suspense for Hallowe'en.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every year for Hallowe'en, I set a different goal for myself. Two years ago, it was a good vampire story. Last year, it was a good ghost story. And this is my attempt at a good story of suspense, in the style of Alfred Hitchcock films.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

“Oh, I see it, Mrs. Hudson! Forgive me, it was hidden behind a python coil of rope, a trunk helpfully labelled ‘Untraceable Poisons,’ and, oh, my goodness, a darling old dolls’ house!”

“Dolls’ house? You must be mistaken, Doctor. I’ve no dolls’ house,” calls the voice from the landing.

“I see and I observe, my good woman. And I’m not the detective of the household, but this thick layer of dust seems to indicate that it’s been here a while. No doubt it’s been buried amongst the furniture and the boxes and Holmes’s accoutrement. I believe that you could hide a body up here and it might go undiscovered for years.”

“Oh, Doctor, please. You’re supposed to be less, uh, fanciful one. But a dolls’ house? I suppose it could have belonged to a prior tenant or even the former owner, but surely I would’ve seen it.”

“Imagine leaving such a beauty behind! There’s even a Mister and a Missus of his fine home. Come, have a look!”

“Oh, no, sir. I have a strict rule. I do not enter the lumber room.”

I turn my head and eye the rows of jars on three shelves. And sigh.

“It’s the ears, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“He does have quite the collection, but that monograph was published more than a decade ago. I wonder why he keeps them.”

“I’m certain that I don’t know, sir, but he compensates me adequately to store them, so…”

“Yes, well, here’s the chair you wanted.” I dislodge the object of my hunt from the jumbled clutter and set it at the top of the stairs. “Nice and sturdy. I’ll carry it down for you.”

“Oh, thank you. I fear that one,” she waves a hand at the chair sitting at the foot of the stairs, “is going to splinter any day, and it’ll give someone a nasty shock when it does. Is there space to store it up there?”

“I will make it fit. And I’m glad you’re not going to use it for kindling. It’s quite nice, even though the velvet is so faded that you can hardly tell it was once green.”

“I’ll get someone to fix it up one day. Thank you again, Doctor.”

“It’s nothing. You know, Mrs. Hudson,” I glance back toward the interior of the lumber room, “that dolls’ house gives me an idea. It’s this case. Holmes is absolutely stuck.”

“Yes, so I’ve gathered by the pacing and the smoking and the noise that bears very little resemblance to violin-playing at all hours of the night.”

“Yes, well, that miniature house looks like the Carruthers home, that is, where the murder took place. Of course, a lot of residences look alike. I mean, it looks an awful lot like 221 Baker Street, too, but I am wondering if I set it to rights, Holmes might be able to use it and the pair of dolls to determine _how_ the Colonel killed his wife.”

“A visual aide? Recreation of the scene?”

“Precisely.”

“You’re so very good to Mister Holmes, Doctor. Let me see if I have any scraps that can help you, but, uh, not in _there_. I’ll check downstairs.”

* * *

At the sound of the front door, I cease my pantomime of a caged tiger.

Finally.

As Watson’s head crests the stairs, hope swoons.

Oh, no.

He’s tired. Too tired.

“Welcome back, Doctor,” I say in a cool, stiff tone meant to mask the sentiment bubbling in my chest.

“Yes, a much longer evening than anticipated, unfortunately,” he laments as he sheds his winter layers. “Every one of my patients seems to be feeling the weather.”

He catches sight of the bottle.

“The Montrachet, Holmes?”

“Nothing less will do, Watson. A celebration’s in order.”

“Case solved?”

And, perhaps, something else which might require nothing but the best.

“As predicted, Carruthers confessed,” I say and feel no little pride that my words are the struck match that dispels the darkness in his countenance.

“Oh, well done, Holmes!” Watson cries with undisguised jubilation.

Not too tired now.

Hurrah!

And I never weary of it, the praise from his lips, the glow of admiration in his eyes.

I revel and smile. “Thank you. Have a seat, my dear man. And a glass.”

“Thank you. Oh, that fire’s nice.”

“It’s a bitterly cold night,” I remark, then add in a softer, almost confessional, tone, “And thank you, Watson.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, wait, for what?”

For everything.

“For the dolls’ house. I would never have solved the case without it.”

“Oh, you’re very welcome, Holmes. Who’d have thought that conducting your light would require a bit of mouse-sized carpentry?”

I raise my glass to his mischievous half-grin.

“Here’s to us, Watson.”

“Oh, Holmes.”

His voice, his gaze warms. His whole posture softens. And I am led once more, perhaps foolishly, into believing my cause is not a wholly lost one.

“Yes,” Watson agrees, “let’s toast to us—and to there being no such thing as a perfect murder when Sherlock Holmes is on the case! Cheers.”

Our glasses touch.

“Cheers.”

We sip.

And drunk on those devilish intoxications, hope and flattery, I muse aloud.

“Colonel Carruthers thought himself clever, didn’t he? But with Professor Moriarty beyond the ken, I suppose the only person in London truly capable of committing the perfect murder would be, well, me.”

Watson laughs and draws a hand to his neck. “Oh, goodness! Should I be worried? The Baker Street Garrotter?”

“Perhaps. If I were quite bored,” I jest. “No, the perfect murder would conform to precepts, which Colonel Carruthers’ crime neglected, to his folly and justice’s boon, I might add.”

“All right, let’s hear them.”

I can resist anything but the temptation to expound, so I do.

“Well, first, the perfect murder should appear to be motiveless. From the start, the Colonel had two very clear ones, lucre and revenge. Second, the perfect murder should be made to look like an accident, and failing that, a suicide. And the murderer should abandon the scene of the murder at once, flee the country, if possible. Carruthers took enormous risks by remaining in the house.”

“I suppose it fed his ego.”

Enough of the case. Any more delay and I will lose my nerve.

I drain my glass and place it on the table. Then I lean forward in my armchair.

“Yes, well, speaking of egos and pride and, well, the swallowing thereof, Watson, I have something I wish to say—”

The door swings open.

Damn it!

“Oh, Doctor Watson! You’ve returned! I was beginning to worry.”

“Hello, Mrs. Hudson! How are you?”

“Very well, but the ache in my hip says we’re in for a good deal of snow.”

“Your hip must have been talking to my shoulder. It’s saying the same.”

“Oh, of course, you’ve been celebrating. Shall I leave the tray?”

‘Yes, and please go away whilst I bare my heart’ is on the tip of my frustrated tongue when Watson says,

“Oh, no, here, Mrs. Hudson.” He covers his mouth with a hand and yawns. My heart sinks. “Oh, excuse me, Holmes, I think I’ll retire forthwith. Spirit willing, flesh weak, all that.” He finishes the wine, then returns the glass to the tray. “But what a splendid elixir that is!”

Not splendid enough.

“Thank you, Doctor. Mister Holmes?”

I place my glass on the tray and give her a polite nod.

“Oh, but Holmes, you had something you wish to—”

“Nothing that cannot wait, Watson. Sleep well.”

“Very well. And congratulations!”

As Watson heads for the stairs, his hand brushes my shoulder. My sinking heart rebounds if for a single pulse, a single gulp of breath.

“Good night to you both.”

“Good night.”

* * *

I draw the sheet off with a magician’s flourish.

“Oh, Holmes! Is this what you wanted to tell me last night?”

“Yes,” I lie. “I made a few renovations to the dolls’ house.”

Watson grins and claps his hands together and bends closer to the miniature three-floored edifice.

“Oh, it’s marvelous! A tiny 221 Baker Street—with no detail spared! I told you the resemblance was uncanny. Look, seventeen steps from street to first floor. And there’s your desk, my desk, the settee, the breakfast table, even the bear hearth rug and your rapier on the wall! And our armchairs!”

“I’ve also re-costumed the occupants.”

“I see! The murderous Colonel is now bedecked in a mouse-coloured dressing gown and the doomed Mrs. Carruthers is now sporting a handsome moustache. Here.” Watson takes up the Holmes-doll and school his voice into a mocking baritone, ‘The game’s a-foot, Watson!’” He makes the doll dance then knock on the door of the upstairs bedroom.

Surrendering to Watson’s mirth, I lay doll-Watson in the bed of the upstairs bedroom and throw a tiny blanket over him.

“‘Bloody hell, Holmes! I was sleeping! Where’s my gun?’” I answer, gruffly.

We giggle.

“And by the way, I have taken the liberty of providing dear doll-Watson with a revolver. It’s in the bedside table.”

“Good. Then nothing important has been forgot.”

“It brings out the child in one, doesn’t it?” I say.

“How could it not? It’s fabulous,” he replies.

The door opens and a peevish squawk precedes the breakfast tray.

“If you gentlemen could kindly remove your toys from the table!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Watson replies. He hastily transfers the dolls’ house to the settee.

Mrs. Hudson slams the tray on the table. Then she leaves, pausing only to scowl at the window and mutter, “And, of course, the snow’s begun!”

When the door closes, we look at each other and dissolve once more into schoolboy snickering.

We continue our play, only halting for bites and sips and Mrs. Hudson’s reappearance when the breakfast things are removed.

In two hours, the mystery of the out of sorts landlady is solved. And not unlike Colonel Carruthers, she confesses.

“It’ll only be two days. Three at the most.”

“Go,” Watson insists. “No one will tend to your sister better than you.”

I nod.

Her head turns toward the white flurries pelting the bow window that looks on Baker Street.

“You could go to a hotel,” she says.

“We could,” I agree. “But…”

I catch Watson’s eye. He nods. The gesture is minute, but speak volumes.

My heart sings. Three snowy days with few, if any, interruptions.

Oh, the possibilities!

“We can take care of ourselves, Mrs. Hudson,” I say.

“I shan’t leave until the afternoon. I’ll have everything as ready as it can be,” she says quickly. “Fully-stocked—”

“You should leave as soon as you are able,” Watson urges. “That snow is only going to get worse, but if you’re worried about the rooms, I promise that I shan’t let Holmes set fire to anything.” I pretend to be affronted as he continues, “And he’s right: we can take care of ourselves. What little the Army failed to teach me in that respect, Mary Watson née Morstan took care of…”

Watson’s brow furrows. He doesn’t finish his statement.

“It’ll only be three days. I shall return on Tuesday, the 30th, ” says Mrs. Hudson, wringing her hands like a heroine in a novel.

“You mean the 29th,” Watson interjects in a vague tone. His gaze drifts to the breakfast table.

She looks up. “Doctor?”

“Watson, I am afraid you’re a day behind the rest of us,” I tease.

But Watson does not laugh. Or smile.

His face is a dull mask, that fog of war it used to bear in our very early days as fellow lodgers. Then he springs to life, hurrying to a stack of newspapers on the table.

“No, no, no,” he mumbles, running one hand through his hair. “Damn it!”

“Doctor!” cries Mrs. Hudson.

And to my, and Mrs. Hudson’s, astonishment, Watson offers no apology.

“Doctor?” she queries.

But he’s gone. The front door slams.

She sighs impatiently. “He left without a hat, without a coat, in this weather!”

“Prepare for your journey. I shall see to him,” I say, intending to reassure, but my voice rings oddly hollow.

* * *

I would be a very poor sleuthhound, indeed, if I could not follow a bare-headed man stumbling clumsily through a snowstorm. As soon as I realise his destination, however, I keep my distance, allowing him a full five minutes before concern and curiosity trump respect for privacy.

“Watson?”

“Holmes! What in the devil—?”

Watson’s hands are balled in fists at his sides. His hair, eyebrows, and moustache are dusted white. He stomps and shivers as the snow swirls, then settles in layers of delicate lace around us.

I thrust a bundle of gloves, coat, scarf, and hat at his chest. He offers a nod of thanks and swaddles himself. Then he shouts to be heard over the wind.

“I forgot!”

Ah.

Watson turns and falls to one knee and I wince involuntarily at the cold and damp that must be seeping through the point where his trousers touch ground.

With a gloved hand, he wipes the snow from the name and dates on the gravestone, then bends his head as if in prayer.

Ah.

It is the anniversary of her death that he has missed.

“…sorry…dear…promise….”

His voice is low, and the wind is picking up speed.

“We were busy with the case! She understands! She was always a forgiving woman!” I cry, adding a weak smile.

I stumble backwards.

I do not know the man who turns, who rises, who snarls.

I do not know the injured beast who, with face carved in pain and anger, roars.

“Oh, what would you know about it? About any of it—forgiveness, promises, grief, love?” he shouts.

A single snowflake, one among the many, captures my full attention as it circles, then clings to my eyelash.

Forgiveness. Promises. Grief.

Love.

What would I know about any of it?

“Absolutely nothing,” I say. “The softer emotions are in direct opposition to that true, cold reason which I place above all things. Apologies for the intrusion. I’ll return to aide Mrs. Hudson in her preparations.”

I turn and flee, not sparing a single thought for the call of my name as it is braids itself into the wind and pursues me.

* * *

What would I know about it?

Forgiveness? Only to expect it to be handed over blithely after I’ve transgressed, lied and manipulated.

Promises? I never make them to anyone, except the rare vow of vengeance for clients’ whom my lack of foresight has seen fit to send to their deaths.

Grief? Can one grieve what one has abandoned voluntarily as I abandoned Watson?

Love? Is that what I feel? Or is it just the warmth of accolades and attention? Is it merely the comfort of habit?

No, Watson is quite right. I know nothing.

But he?

He forgives. He carries the pain of broken promises like a cross. His grief has more colours and more history than the wall of a stone quarry. War, illness, death surround him, almost plague him with a Job-like regularity.

How is he not crushed by the weight of it?

I cross the threshold and pass straight upstairs.

And do not help Mrs. Hudson at all.

I throw a valise on the foot of my bed and begin to fill it with clothes.

A hotel will be better.

Then through the open door, I catch site of the dolls’ house on the settee and reconsider.

* * *

Mrs. Hudson’s frenzied arranging and provisioning and packing thumps, bumps, and scratches two floors below me.

I’m in the lumber room, perched on a rickety old chair, peering into little 221b.

I place Doll-Holmes and doll-Watson in their armchairs before the fire, sitting so close that their outstretched hands overlap.

What a wonderful world!

I take up my violin. The tune is one that I have been composing in my heart for a long time, but this is the first time that I have put bow to strings and give real sound to the music inside me.

I play for this Watson and Holmes, that they may enjoy the quiet happiness that is always just beyond their namesakes’ reach.

I stumble upon the notes and stop.

Work is the best antidote to sorrow.

I place the doll-Holmes at the little chemical bench. I cover the doll-Watson with a tiny blanket and set a tiny book upon his lap. I close the hinged door to the dolls’ house and bid them ‘good night.’

* * *

_What do you know of any of it?_

“What an arse I am, Mary! I don’t know why you said ‘yes.’ I don’t know how you endured as long as you did.”

I am cold.

Good.

I ought to freeze to death out here like the bastard I am. They ought to find my body in the spring thaw. What a waste of human breath I am sometimes.

I kneel again and welcome the return of the icy damp.

“I am so sorry, my dear. I was doing what I always did.” I brush the stone once more, just enough to reveal the ‘Mary.’ “I was chasing after Holmes on a case. And, if you can believe it, playing dolls with him. And I forgot. You deserve, deserved, so much more. You who saw, who understood, and loved me anyway, merited a prince among men, not a doctor with an old man’s memory and a broken soldier’s temper.”

My vision blurs. I close my eyes.

“And you heard him. No soft emotions. He’d just as soon murder me for sport as, well, anything else.”

I sigh and shake my head.

“He’s still the most perfect reasoning and observing machine the world has ever seen. And I’m still alone in the snow talking to a slab of stone. And feeling sorry for myself. What should I do, my dear?”

I hear her voice.

I laugh.

“Yes, I will go and help Mrs. Hudson.”

* * *

“Holmes? Mrs. Hudson’s ready.” I peek through the crack in his bedroom door, but he is not there.

Oh.

A half-packed suitcase lies on the bed.

I turn.

Holmes appears on the stairs leading up to my bedroom.

“I returned the dolls’ house to the lumber room,” he explains.

I hold up three pages of handwritten notes.

“I’ve got our instructions from Mrs. Hudson. Or are you re-thinking the decision about a hotel?”

He shakes his head.

“Holmes, I—”

What to say?

He stops.

“I am sorry for what I said at the grave. I spoke, very foolishly, in anger. What I said about you, it is not true.”

“Of course, it is. You know me very well, Watson. The only aspect of blessed unions with which I am familiar is the unfortunate decision of one party to seek to end the life of the other party and its consequences.”

He waves a dismissive hand and disappears down the stairs.

I look over my shoulder. I think of the valise.

A hotel? No.

My feet seem to move of their own accord towards the stairs. Not down, to bid farewell to Mrs. Hudson, but rather up, to the lumber room.

* * *

I smile.

Doll-Holmes sits on a stool in the corner before a miniature acid-charred bench of chemicals. Doll-Watson is asleep in his armchair, blanket tucked up to his chin as is my habit, with an open book on his lap.

I lead an extraordinary life. I am witness to so many wonders. I have been gifted with so many blessings.

To want anything more is hubris.

To want to disturb something so special is wickedness.

And to want something impossible is madness.

Hubris. Wickedness. Madness.

“Enjoy the simple things, like a good nap by a warm fire,” I tell myself, “as this Watson does. Be content with what you have. Maybe tomorrow there’ll be a murder or a puzzle, something new to distract.”

* * *

Dinner is a quiet, simple affair and afterwards, I take first scullery duty and am grateful for it. With my hands busy, I am less weighed by the day’s guilt and sorrow and pain. I am less plagued by the polite reserve that has settled between Holmes and me, as thick and cold and blanketing as the snow beyond the pane.

When I finish, I hear Holmes’s violin.

The tune is new, or at least new to me. And so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes.

“Who?” I ask when I return to the sitting room.

“An amateur composer of no reputation.”

Oh, Holmes.

“What’s it called?”

The question startles him, and his startling startles me.

“’The Perfect Murder’” he says quickly.

“Oh, lovely,” I say dryly as I pluck _The Wreck of the Grosvenor_ from the bookshelf and settle into my armchair with a blanket. “The first act is the tainted nail, I suppose.”

He smiles. “Yes, it’s followed by the false hanging, the untraceable poison—”

“I think I’ve heard that one. It’s a waltz, isn’t it?”

“—and then, of course—”

We speak as one.

“The revolver that goes off by accident.”

“What a macabre pair we are!” I ejaculate.

But we aren’t a pair.

Yes, we are.

Just not in the inverted, perverted way of my fantasy.

Stop it!

Hubris. Wickedness. Madness.

“Watson?”

“Hmm?”

“Thinking of Mary?”

Holmes sound nervous. He looks nervous.

Why?

Because you bit his head off earlier today, you arse!

“Yes,” I lie. “Grief often revisits on anniversaries.”

Holmes nods thoughtfully.

I throw off book and blanket and visit the bow window. “The snow’s easing. I’m glad Mrs. Hudson left when she did. Nothing’s moving now. We are, for all practical purposes, trapped.”

Without a word, Holmes places his violin in the seat of his armchair and retires to the far corner of the room. He takes a seat on the stool before the laboratory bench and flips open a note-book.

Well, that’s that.

“Good night, Holmes.”

“Good night, Watson.”

I stare at the ceiling, thinking of everything and nothing, to the faint puttering of Holmes downstairs until Queen Mab finally spins the last thread of her tendrilled web.

* * *

The second time that I nearly topple from the stool in mid-nod, I admit body’s defeat over mind and stretch myself upon the settee and doze fitfully for the better part of an hour. Then in the moments just before dawn, I creep up the stairs—careful to avoid the noisy sixth step—and steal into the lumber room.

I open the door of the dolls’ house.

Doll-Watson is abed in his upstairs room.

But Doll-Holmes is standing in the centre of the sitting room with a rapier in hand.

I smile.

How extraordinary!

A pawky joke on Watson’s part!

But I suppose a bit of fencing practice never goes amiss, regardless of the hour.

* * *

What is Holmes doing?

Sounds like bartitsu.

I don my dressing gown and slip as quietly as possible into the lumber room. The grunts and groans and shuffling downstairs continue unabated.

I open the door of the dolls’ house.

Doll-Holmes is standing in the centre of in the sitting room. His rapier is in hand, extended, and the tip of the sword is piercing doll-Watson’s chest.

How extraordinary!

A bit of a macabre joke on Holmes’s part, no doubt!

The chair creaks beneath me.

I put doll-Watson and doll-Holmes in their armchairs and hang the rapier back on the little wall. Then I shut the door to house and make my way down the stairs, careful to avoid the sixth step.

Holmes’s back is to me, jabbing, thrusting.

My lips form his name but before a sound is uttered, he turns, springs.

“ARGH!”


	2. Chapter 2

A slash. A burn. A gasp.

“Watson! Dear God, what have I done?”

Holmes throws the rapier to the floor.

And never, not in case or calamity or danger, have I seen his face so pale, his expression so panicked.

I hasten to reassure him.

“It’s a mere scratch. An accident. I should know better than to sneak up on a man with a sword in his hand.” My own hand goes to the skin stretched o’er my clavicle, fingers recognising the wet stickiness as it seeps through the fabric of nightshirt and dressing gown. “It’s nothing, Holmes. My bag’s upstairs. Fetch me some water and clean linen and I’ll take care of it.”

* * *

Holmes must make two trips because of his shaking hands.

“It’s not very deep at all. No sutures,” I call.

Despite invitation, he stoutly refuses to enter my bedroom, choosing to remain on the landing just outside the door.

At least that is where I believe he is whilst I clean, examine, and dress the wound, but when I emerge, he is nowhere to be seen.

I head downstairs with torn, bloody clothing and used linen in hand. Guided by Mrs. Hudson’s instructions, I find what I need to wash them. I put on water for tea as well, moving slowly because the sting of the wound has been joined by an uncomfortable stiffness of muscles and joints on my left side.

Despite the pain, I find my task oddly calming—while readily acknowledging that were it as much of my routine as it is for Mrs. Hudson and those who work for her, I should not be nearly so charmed.

I spread the clothes and linen on a rack before the stove to dry. I feel a vague momentum and a definite hunger and so throw myself into making breakfast for myself and Holmes.

I assemble everything on the tray but the weight of it is too much strain.

I sigh.

I will have to swallow my pride and ask Holmes for help, but first, I will have to find him.

* * *

I slip away from Watson’s bedroom door and hide in the lumber room.

How? How? How?

The first question is simple: how did doll-Watson and doll-Holmes end up back in their little armchairs?

Answer: Watson moved them earlier this morning before he came downstairs.

The second question is more difficult: how did I not realise that Watson was awake, how did I fail to hear him moving about his bedroom or on the stairs?

Answer: my attention was elsewhere. I’d been working on the song, composing, as I went through the movements with the sword, the song that I told Watson was called _The Perfect Murder_ because I dare not confess its true name.

_John’s Song._

Not once in our many years of association have I addressed Watson by his Christian name.

Except in fantasy.

In the quiet moments of the night, when neither puzzle nor philosophy tempt, I take him in my arms and place every faculty of my not inconsiderable supply in the service of his carnal pleasure. With mouth and fingers, I draw forth his music, his song, an imagined symphony of moans and sighs and whimpers. And from my own lips, there is only one sound.

John.

Yes, I was distracted. As I am now. Back to the questions.

The third is the most important: how did I not hear him approach me?

No answer.

And then there is the most baffling question: why?

Why did I jump? Why did I spring? Why did I wound the last man on earth I would desire to harm?

I do not know. There’s no substance tainting my veins. I am under the influence of absolutely nothing, save a negligible deficit of sleep, and yet my behavior is inexplicable, even to me, me who has an answer for everything.

I stare at doll-Holmes as if he can provide the clue to make sense of the matter.

He’s tiresomely mute.

I shake my head.

But as I look at doll-Holmes, I cannot help but think of his previous incarnation, doll-Colonel Carruthers. I think of hate disfigured and disguised as love, even to the lover.

Especially to the lover.

Is it possible that I am angry, that I am resentful of Watson’s love for his late wife? And if so, is it then possible, that the anger and resentment manifested in this attack?

It is a ridiculous as the theory of monomania which Watson often proposes when a case is even more bizarre than the norm.

I open my hands and study my palms and shake my head again.

Highly improbable that it is true, but what a monster am I if it is!

There’s a knock.

I start, then curse my nerves.

What is wrong with me?

Watson’s voice is tentative and so polite it makes my heart ache.

“Holmes, would you mind very much giving me a hand with the breakfast tray?”

“Not at all,” I reply quickly and shut the door of the dolls’ house.

* * *

Just yesterday morning, Holmes and I were laughing like naughty school boys, and today we are silent and sullen like frightened ones.

When the meal ends, Holmes disappears with the tray downstairs.

I tend the fire clumsily, then lumber to the window, studying the world outside, as silent, holy, calm and white as a Yuletide carol.

I take up _The Wreck of the Grosvenor_ , but the wound still throbs. Finding no comfortable position in my armchair, I move to the settee.

I don’t even realise that I am asleep until the wound wakes me. I shift and fall back asleep again. This sequence occurs with tiresome frequency until a melody slips into my dreams.

 _The Perfect Murder_.

I sigh and wonder what kind of lover would give something so beautiful so devilish a name?

Lover, egad.

Hubris. Wickedness. Madness.

I sleep.

* * *

Watson grimaces. He stirs.

The wound still pains him.

I want to shoot the wall, but I take up my violin instead and pour out everything I know and everything I don’t know, every rant, every apology, every confession, every ribald joke, every case, every fear, every fantasy into the melody.

Everything I am is his for the deciphering and the knowing.

And when Watson’s body finally stills and at long last his breath falls steady and even, I abandon music for the restoration of order, taking up my index books and a pile of newspaper clippings.

Watson wakes with a smile on his face, and there’s nothing for it but to smile back.

Oh, my beamish boy.

He and I share a heavy tea and retire to our armchairs. We exchange curious and amusing stories of clients and patients and by bedtime, the only reminder of the morning’s horror is Watson’s wince before he mounts the stairs to his bedroom.

Tomorrow will be better.

* * *

I remove the dressing. A hand mirror reveals what the throbbing has been telling me all evening.

The wound is not healing properly.

The cut is angry, red, and oozing, far worse than it was earlier.

It doesn’t make sense.

It’s a mere scratch!

The blade. It wasn’t clean. Or maybe it was…

No.

_The Perfect Murder._

_The first act is the tainted nail._

Holmes did not tamper with the blade. It was an accident. He did not hurt me on purpose. He would never harm me on purpose.

Except, of course, in pretending to be dead for three years.

It could have been an experiment gone wrong, but he would have explained and apologised.

Wouldn’t he?

I begin to pace the bedroom and find that being in motion eases the pain and keeps the darkest, most malicious thoughts at bay. When I tire, I return to bed, rolling from one side to the other, repeating to myself:

Sherlock Holmes is not trying to murder me.

* * *

I listen to Watson’s footsteps.

In pain still? Or is something else worrying him? Grief for Mary?

I must ask tomorrow.

I abandon the index books and begin to pack myself before the hearth, mirroring Watson’s back-and-forth upstairs.

Tomorrow will be better.

* * *

Tomorrow is far worse.

It is past four o’clock in the morning when, at last, I no longer hear the muffled creaking of wooden floorboards or the squeaking of iron bed frame emanating from Watson’s bedroom.

I release the breath that I’ve been holding for hours, draw the curtains, then move slowly and quietly to the lumber room.

I sit on a wobbly chair and open the door to the dolls’ house.

Doll-Watson is hanging by a rope from a beam in his bedroom.

Doll-Holmes kneels in the doorway, head in hands.

No!

Without thinking, I fly across the landing to Watson’s bedroom door. I listen, ear to wood, then gently twist the doorknob and push.

Watson is asleep in his bed.

But the mere sight of him doesn’t relieve my anxiety.

I squint and, despite the darkness, note the rise and fall of his chest.

Alive.

“Holmes?”

Alive and awake.

Damn!

“Would you like scrambled or soft-boiled egg for breakfast, Watson?”

“Bloody hell. What time is it?”

“Early. I am setting the fire.”

“Soft-boiled as always, you madman.”

“Right. Very well. Go back to sleep.”

Watson grunts.

I shut the door and lean against it.

This is ridiculous. The dolls’ house scene must be a joke. But what cruel one! And John Watson is not cruel. Ever.

But if it is not a joke, then what is it?

A cry for help. A note.

A message of some kind but one so dark and forbidden that Watson dare not speak the words aloud.

Even so, it doesn’t make sense. Why would Watson want to kill himself?

Perhaps the wound is precipitating a feverish delirium.

 _Grief often revisits on anniversaries_.

No. No! No?

I return to the lumber room. I free doll-Watson from his noose and rescue doll-Holmes from his prostration. I place them in their armchairs, with arms extended, hands overlapping. It is a message of my own.

_See, Watson? I, your friend, the one who loves you most in this world, am here. Please let me help you._

Watson, however, may not return to the lumber room, of course, so this should not be the only whole of my strategy.

How to foil his plan?

I realise much too late for one who claims to possess acute powers of observation that the tipped chair is a miniature version of the very one upon which I am sitting.

I remove both it and the dolls’ noose, which dangles in the upstairs bedroom of the dolls’ house.

I will set the fire, as I promised Watson, and burn them.

I stand. And freeze.

There is the rope, a coil of jute heavy and strong enough to hang a real Watson.

Plaguing questions plague once more.

Is the dolls’ house scene a cruel joke? Or a cry for help? Or a manifestation of brewing fever-madness?

I snort.

I don’t give a damn what it is!

I will not risk losing Watson!

I drop the dolls’ house chair and rope in the voluminous pocket of my dressing gown and set about dislodging the real rope. It is stubborn, like a hibernating viper in its pit, stuck fast beneath a trunk heavy with books and notes related to an aborted monograph on rare poisons. Freeing it takes no little effort and makes no little noise.

But when victory’s mine, I smile.

And take the bloody chair, too.

* * *

I wake from an odd dream of Holmes cooking eggs and find the entire left side of my chest, quite metaphorically, on fire. I wince and groan as I push myself to sitting, vowing to examine the rapier with my own eyes and confront Holmes directly about my suspicion.

It takes me far longer than it should to change the dressing of my wound, then fumble into my dressing gown and slippers. Meanwhile, I hear Holmes wrestling with something in the lumber room, then his footsteps, heavier and slower than is his custom, heading downstairs.

I cross into the lumber room and note the disappearance of the old green velvet chair, then I open the front door of the dolls’ house.

And blink, disbelieving my own eyes.

Doll-Watson is hanged by the neck in the sitting room.

Doll-Holmes is holding the far end of the rope that suspends doll-Watson and is tipping a chair from under him.

Good Lord!

This is not macabre. This is wrong!

_The Perfect Murder._

_…the first act’s the tainted nail…_

_…it’s followed by the false hanging…_

No!

Holmes is not going to hang me in the sitting room! The whole notion is absurd!

The throbbing of chest reminds me that yesterday morning at this hour I would not have believed Holmes would have slashed me with a rapier, either.

Oh, doubt is a wicked thing!

The chair beneath doll-Watson is the one missing from the lumber room, the one with the faded green velvet. I make a cursory search of the room for the coil of rope. It is gone, too.

The noises.

Holmes was taking the rope and the chair downstairs.

Dear God.

His own words.

_…the only person in London truly capable of committing the perfect murder would be, well, me…_

_…the perfect murder should appear to be motiveless…_

_…. the perfect murder should be made to look like an accident, and failing that, a suicide…_

_…. the murderer should abandon the scene of the murder at once, flee the country, if possible…_

My head swims.

No motive.

My hand goes the burning gash in my chest.

Accident.

I stare at the dolls’ house, then look, futilely, frantically, about for any sign of the rope and chair.

Suicide.

Holmes’s half-full suitcase lying on the bed.

Flight.

The bloody song! I knew it! I intuited, somehow, that the song was for me, about me.

_The Perfect Murder of John Watson._

No!

This is hubris, wickedness, madness. This is the pain taking hold of my thought processes. I must demand a logical, rational explanation of Holmes at once.

I slam the door of the dolls’ house and march stiffly down the stairs.

And find him.

With the rope.

And the chair.

And an axe.


	3. Chapter 3

“Just what do you think that you are doing, Holmes?”

It is my battlefield voice, a bit rusty from more than a decade of disuse, but nevertheless, war-hard and commanding.

“Tying knots,” he says. “Good practise for Captain Basil. And may prove useful—”

“What are you doing with the chair?”

“Mrs. Hudson asked me to chop it up for kindling.”

“LIAR!”

Holmes hurls the whole coil of rope into the fire. It hisses like an asp rudely awakened.

My eyes fix on the axe. Holmes appears to be lunging for it, so I twist—crying out at the ripping pain—and grab the rapier from the wall.

I swing back and point the rapier at his heart.

His fingers hover just above the handle of the axe. I frown. Now there’s flicker of uncertainty in my mind as to if he was, in fact, reaching for it, but I quash like a bothersome insect and quickly become insensate to anything but my righteous, seething wrath.

“You are lying, Holmes. I know you are lying.”

Feel my power, Holmes. I am judge. I am jury. I am executioner.

Holmes doesn’t touch the axe. Still hunched over, head down, he extends his arms out to his sides, palms up.

“I will not touch the axe, Watson,” he vows.

“What is at the end of this blade, Holmes?”

He lifts his head only to give the sword a quick glance. “A very sharp point.”

“Is that all?”

He shrugs. “Isn’t it enough?”

“Are you mad, Holmes?”

He laughs! The bloody devil has the audacity to laugh! Then he replies,

“Perhaps.”

He lifts his head once more, and the light in his grey eyes is so soft and his expression so sincere, I almost forget that he is a consummate liar.

By word, deed, and omission.

Then a thought dawns. It is the final piece of the puzzle that makes sense of every single event that has occurred thus far. And it nearly finishes me.

My voice quivers with disgust and relief and a dozen other contradictory emotions.

“You aren’t mad, Holmes. You’re _high_.”

* * *

I am not mad. Or high.

I am angry.

“It is the cocaine, Holmes, that is making you do this.”

“THERE IS NO COCAINE!”

“Something else, then, new, exotic.”

I want to grab Watson and shake him, but, of course, the rapier and the wild look in his eyes forbids that. Many a soldier in many a land in many a moment in history has, out of despair and pain, fallen on a sword, and I will not be witness to Watson impaling himself on mine.

He is suffering of body. And he is disturbed of mind.

He is, in fact, unraveling before my eyes like a poorly-knitted shawl.

And I love him so that, with my eyes wide open and fixed on his, I pray, yes, pray, to a god in whom I do not believe for the words, the skeleton key of language, that will unlock this madness.

An invisible hand presses down on the spot between my shoulder blades. I bend as low as my body allows whilst still holding Watson’s gaze. I keep my arms outstretched like a dancer.  

“Watson, I swear on anything you find holy that I am not knowingly under the influence of any chemical. And I will do anything you ask of me to prove it.”

His reply stuns.

“Chop up the chair. And burn it.”

“Gladly.”

And with the rapier still trained on me, I oblige.

A dozen pieces of chair remain when Watson’s weakness and fatigue finally outstrip his rage. He returns the rapier to the wall, but it is my turn to make the dramatic gesture.

I seize the sword and rush upstairs, crashing into Watson’s bedroom and forcing the small window open.

The sword plunges, like a diver, into the snowdrift in backyard.

There.

Watson is not behind me.

I hear a quiet noise, a noise that is usually followed by Watson himself administering a fortifying brandy to the noisemaker.

I hurry back downstairs.

He is on the floor, weeping.

Fighting the urge to take him in my arms brings tears to my eyes. And the Greek chorus of doubt chants its familiar warning.

If I do, if I do, if I do…

Will he scream? Will he shirk? Will he resist? Will he flee? Will he hurt himself more?

Watson shudders, and I can almost see the burden of suffering laid upon him. My heart bleeds as surely as if it had been stabbed, and not by something as fine and neat as a rapier, but something ugly, messy, crafted by nature, not smith.

I am gored.

I cannot resist, nay, I shall not resist any longer.

I fall beside him on the rug and draw him into my arms. I rest my cheek on his bent head.

“Watson.”

“Holmes, forgive me,” he whispers between sobs.

“Of course. And know I will not harm you, Watson, not for anything in the world.”

I sit up and give his head a single caress, a gesture more intimate than any we have ever shared.

It feels like silk. It feels like home. It feels like love.

“Forgive me, Mary. Forgive me,” he mutters.

I don’t speak. I don’t breathe. I don’t blink.

Isn’t it funny that stone can tremble? How metal can fissure? For surely, I am a now temple built on earth portended to crack. I am a machine, one rattle from disassembling into scatterings of gears and springs.

“Everything is twisted, Holmes.”

“We’ll untwist it together.”

These words are answer to earlier prayer for Watson’s entire being sighs and slumps against me and, for one shard of time, he returns my embrace.

And it is worth the wound, worth many wounds, to be held by the man that I love.

Then Watson releases me and asks the most quintessential Watson question ever queried by a Watson,

“Would you like a cup of tea, Holmes?”

Heart and brain forbid any reply but,

“That’d be lovely. Thank you, Watson.”

* * *

Holmes requests only tea and toast but I prepare eggs and coffee as well. He tends the fire upstairs as I fuss about the kitchen. I move slowly. The pain is now as nagging and as uncomfortable as an ailing aunt’s unanswered correspondence. As before, however, I appreciate the meditative quality of rote chores.

I think, no, I ask, and answer, myself.

Am I mad?

All signs point to yes.

Did I, in fact, just force Holmes at sword-point to destroy one of Mrs. Hudson’s chairs because I believed him about to force me to take my own life?

Once again, the answer is affirmative, and when laid out—cause, effect; this, then this, then this—the whole sequence is preposterous.

But even in madness, there is grace.

_We’ll untwist it together._

From the sitting room, Holmes’s violin sings.

The music stops, then there’s the tell-tale squeak of the sixth step.

I must ask him about the song. I must ask him about the dolls’ house. So many things I must ask him, but not now.

I make tea. I make toast. I make eggs. I make coffee. One by one by one, I place teapot and coffee pot and plates and cups and saucers and spoons on the tray.

Holmes bounds like a stag downstairs, stopping at the door of the kitchen and announcing a voice I know to be forced, but forced _what_ my addled mind cannot tell me,

“Watson, you must let me help you with the tray.”

“Of course.”

We exchange places like actors on a stage, me to the door, he to the tray.

“I made eggs, too,” I say for lack of anything better to say.

“How thoughtful. I’m famished.”

* * *

Holmes stands at the breakfast table and asks in a waiter-like voice that makes me smile, “Coffee, sir?”

“Yes, please.”

He takes up the cup nearest him and pours, then he hands it to me. He pours himself a cup, then sits down across from me.

I breathe in the comforting aroma and peer into the cup. My own face looks back at me, but it is Holmes’s figure that floods my mind’s eye.

Holmes, leaning over the tray, standing at the table.

The image is a memory surfacing, a telegraphed message crossing the Channel from eyes to brain. It is Holmes’s reflection in the well-polished coffee pot. I see a hand, of the two that I adore, of the two that manipulate fragile philosophical instruments with the utmost care, move in a way that violates the gossamer-thin trust that he and I have just forged.

Words echo.

_The Perfect Murder._

_…the untraceable poison…_

The trunk in the lumber room. The squeak on the sixth step.

Cup touches lips, but I do not drink.

Hubris. Wickedness. Madness.

Or is it?

Holmes blinks.

He really shouldn’t blink.

“Oh, you’re an absolute serpent,” I growl.

He looks frightened. I don’t care.

“Holmes, did you put something in my coffee?”

When what little colour remains in his face drains, he nods.

“Yes, I did, Watson.”

* * *

“The mildest of sedatives. The equivalent of a bit of laudanum. Harmless, Watson.”

“Liar. It’s poison. You have a whole trunk of them up there! You put one on the tip of that rapier, too, which now, very conveniently, won’t be found ‘til spring. Oh, what is the use? There is no detective, official or private, that could put the pieces together; no police force that could gather a warrant against you; no judge or jury that’d convict you.”

“What are you saying? You’re mad!”

“Am I?”

“I am not trying to poison you. I am trying to help you.”

“Help me into the grave! For sport!”

“You _are_ mad! I am trying to help you to sleep.”

“Sleep forever!”

I explode into a long, anguished cry of frustration and then, looming over him, spew.

“Do you hear yourself, Watson? I know your habits, your infernal bull-headedness. You won’t take morphine. Or laudanum. Or anything! You prefer to shuffle about and moan and suffer. I don’t know, maybe you think it is nobility or bravery, but, in truth, it is simple idiocy! But, idiot or not, I can’t think with you suffering. It is so infernally distracting! And I need to think, Watson. I desperately, desperately need a bit of peace and quiet to lay out all that has happened and make sense of it all. Something is wrong here, perhaps even evil, but I’m at a loss as to what it is. Or what to do about it. So, yes, I put a pinch in your cup. I was too clumsy about it, yes, but I’m not quite myself either, right now.”

Watson hisses through clenched teeth. “Answer me this, Holmes, and answer me truthfully.”

We are through the looking glass!

“Anything, Watson, anything!” I cry.

“Is that song, the one you played on the violin, the one you call ‘The Perfect Murder,’ about me?”

The room spins. My feet are woefully insufficient pedestals.

“Yes,” I breathe. “It’s yours. The true name is—"

But Watson is gone, clomping clumsily down the stairs, with me in pursuit.

He flings open the front door.

“ARGH!”

Sun on snow blinds us. The world beyond the threshold of 221 Baker Street is a dazzling, desolate wonderland, devoid of human presence, though ploughs rumble in the distance.

Watson slams the door and tries to push past me. His foots slips on a rectangle of paper on the floor and he clings to me, briefly, in order not to fall.

It is but a moment, though. He wrenches himself free and hurtles himself toward the stairs, tripping and stumbling as he climbs.

I let him go.

My hesitation is fruit of the tree that believed drugging him was a good idea. It is wickedness, and a child’s plaything is my only defence.

I had rushed up to the lumber room while Watson was busying about in the kitchen with breakfast, leaving the half dozen bits of chair still piled before the fire.

And as was by now tiresome custom, I stood aghast at the miniature scene that greeted me.

Doll-Watson was in the kitchen, lips to a jug etched with skull and crossbones.

Doll-Homes was in the lumber room.

My plan was the work of a moment.

I flew to my own supply of medicines, tucked away amongst old books, found the sleeping powder, and hid it in my palm just as I reached Watson and the tray.

What folly!

I kick the scrap of paper, sending it flying down the hall, then mount the stairs.

Watson’s bedroom door slams as I reach the sitting room.

Upstairs, muffled grunts and foul curses accompany dull heavy scratching.

The chest of drawers.

Watson has barricaded himself inside his bedroom.

He is afraid of me. Why?

Why not?

I cut him with a sword. I tried to drug him.

Uneaten breakfast on the table. Unburnt splinters of chair on the rug.

I collapse onto the settee, perched on the edge, leaning forward, dropping my head into my hands.

Think.

I must think.

I fall sideways, then roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling.

Tobacco.

I need to smoke. This is at least a three-pipe problem, requiring every ounce of shag to be found on the premises.

But which pipe? The old black clay? The briar root? The cherrywood?

Or perhaps cigarettes.

As I consider the merits of each in relation to complexity of the current dilemma, sleep overwhelms me.

It is evening when I wake, at once, refreshed and disconcerted.

Watson?

I listen.

Silence upstairs

I look ‘round and shiver.

Cold breakfast still on the table. A dying fire in hearth.

I tend the fire, but cannot bring myself to burn the rest of the chair. I abandon the pile on the hearth rug.

I climb the stairs with a candle in hand, avoiding the sixth step, straining my ears for any sound of life in the bedroom. I look over my shoulder at the closed bedroom door, but with a trembling hand and a captive breath, I turn the doorknob to the lumber room.

The troves of junk are undisturbed since my last visit.

And there is the dolls’ house.

I open the door, and inside is, indeed, a nightmare, made more so, perhaps, by the warm glow and jagged shadows that the light from my candle casts upon the tragic scene.

For tragedy, it most definitely is.

Doll-Watson lies sprawled on the floor of his bedroom, a pool of red beneath his head and a tiny revolver by his side.

Doll-Holmes is pressed to the outside of Watson’s bedroom door, unable to enter for the chest of drawers within that holds the door fast.

Horrific, yes, and, also, somehow, wrong.

I walk slowly, as if in a dream, to Watson’s bedroom door and, in precise imitation of my miniature form, press myself to the wood.

I hear a sound and begin to weep.

Snoring.

It is the loud, foul, open-mouthed snoring I know from thin-walled country inns and double-bedded manor house guestrooms and even the occasional return train journey when the case has been unusually taxing and the distance from London great.

I smile a weary half-smile, wipe my wet face with my sleeve, and say a prayer.

Rest, peace, succor, for my dear Watson, all night, if Providence sees fit to grant them.

I head downstairs. Mice have been at the breakfast. I do not care. I collect my old black clay pipe, my tobacco pouch, additional candles, a couple of blankets and pillows.

And when I’m settled into my nest at the top of the landing, I snuff out the candle.

In the darkness, I smoke.

And think.

* * *

I wake to the night just before dawn.

And pain.

Not just in my chest. In my hand, too.

I look down.

I am still holding my gun.

I use my free hand to gently remove the gun from my aching grip. I set it on the bedside table, then begin to massage my palm, fingers, and wrist.

It is a few minutes before I have the dexterity and wherewithal to light a candle, but when I do I see that a chest of drawers blocks the door.

This puzzles me at first but then memory returns.

At the shock of the blinding snow beyond the front door, I had realised how hopeless escape was. My next ambition was to have my revolver in hand. I had taken the luxury of a moment, not hearing Holmes behind me, to peek into the lumber room before crossing the landing to my bedroom.

How much horror one child’s toy can hold?

Quite a lot, apparently, more than I had ever imagined two days ago.

Doll-Watson lay sprawled on the floor of his bedroom, a pool of red beneath his head.

Doll-Holmes stood in the doorway, arm extended, with a tiny revolver in his hand.

I had fled to my sanctuary of my bedroom and drawn the chest of drawers before the door.

I listened for a long while. Holmes had moved back to the sitting room but gone no further.

I decided to clean my gun.

And think.

The dolls’ house scene was horrific, yes. And yet, somehow, wrong.

Too prosaic for Holmes, but perhaps he had a clever plan for disposing of my body.

And then there were his own words and deeds.

He had cut me with the rapier.

He confessed to drugging me, well, attempting to drug me.

He confessed that the song _The Perfect Murder_ was, in fact, about me.

How we jested then about that!

No one was laughing now.

_…the first act’s the tainted nail…_

_…it’s followed by the false hanging…_

_…the untraceable poison…_

And then, of course, last and least.

_The revolver that goes off by accident_.

To my knowledge, there was only one revolver in the house and it was before me, in pieces.

To my knowledge.

What did I know?

Once upon a time, I thought Holmes might love me.

Once reassembled, I held my gun close and paced, no, marched like a soldier, back and forth, from wall to wall.

Still no noise downstairs. Had Holmes fallen asleep? It seemed impossible, but I remembered his famous words, words made famous, of course, by me and my pen and my publisher.

_When you eliminate the impossible…_

I redressed my wound and marched some more.

Then I finally rested on the bed, sitting up with the gun trained on the door. If Holmes tried to enter, I would shoot him.

The mad nature of the thought was not lost on me then, nor is it lost on me now, some hours later, judging by the last sliver of darkness ceding to the light of early morning outside my window.

I check my watch, then resume massaging my hand, breathing in the scent of tobacco.

Holmes is near. And he is thinking.

Of ways to murder me? Of ways to escape? Of alibis? Of motives?                       

Whatever it is, I know he has been thinking a lot and a long while. The scent is thick.

I think myself.

Why Holmes would shoot me?

Shooting me is so unnecessarily reckless.

He could wait for his wound fever to finish me off, but perhaps there is too much potential for recovery in that plan. Perhaps he is impatient and frustrated that his attempts have failed thus far. Perhaps he is tired.

I know I am.

I am not a coward, yet I am cowering.

It is absurd, but these two days have been nothing but absurd.

Where did all this absurdity begin?

It began, I realise…

“With the dolls’ house.”

Holmes’s words, Holmes’s voice, on the landing, finishing my thought.

The hair on my neck bristles.

I hear shuffling just beyond my door, a gasp, then a long silence, then a rustling and what might be single knock on my bedroom door, but to the bottom of my bedroom door.

And then shortly, in the words of Milton, all hell breaks loose.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! Hope you enjoy the end! And watch for an Alfred Hitchcock-style cameo from yours truly at the end. Spooky hugs and kisses to all my gentle readers.

Dawn without. Dawn within.

Watson stirs in his bedroom, but my conclusion looms larger.

It all began…

“With the dolls’ house,” I say aloud.

I rise from my nest on the landing, light the candle in the candlestick, and slip into the lumber room.

I open the door to the dolls’ house.

Doll-Watson and doll-Holmes lay on the floor, on their backs, arms outstretched like children making angels in the snow.

Doll-Watson’s body straddles the threshold of his bedroom. His feet are outside it, and his head is inside it.

Doll-Holmes is in a mirror position vis-à-vis the lumber room, his feet outside, his head inside.

Blood pools beneath both.

And the revolver lies between them, at the top of the stairs, in the middle of the landing.

My gasp is not for the horror of the scene; it does not move me in the least. I am alarmed—and intrigued—by one, single fact.

Someone has moved the dolls since I last viewed them!

I look towards Watson’s bedroom. Could he have crossed the landing without my notice?

There is no other entrance to the lumber room. It has no windows at all. Watson has been in his room the whole time. I heard him snore. I have not slept.

Gramophone. A recording of Watson snoring his signature Watson snore? That would signify diabolical forethought unprecedented in my companion. And could I not tell the difference between the natural and the facsimile? I saw no gramophone yesterday when I threw the rapier out the window. But maybe it was in the lumber room? Then Watson slips back into his room while I was gathering my candles and blankets?

He is not that quick, even without the wound.

No, the whole notion is absurd. But the alternative?

Watson uses something to rearrange the dolls, something sensitive, wires, threads, sticks, hooks, magnets.

_Watson or…_

My gut clenches.

_…someone else._

What if it isn’t Watson?

Nonsense. There is no one else here. He and I are alone.

Aren’t we?

I shiver, then curse myself.

Am I performing acts without my own knowledge?

No!

I shan’t be distracted by absurdities. I am in my right mind. Back to the earlier question.

But what if it isn’t Watson? What if he is seeing what I see and assumes that it is me who is arranging the dolls?

Or worse?

What if he is seeing something _different_ and assumes it is me who is arranging the dolls?

Would it drive him mad enough to point a sword at me and demand I chop up a chair?

I do not know, but I do that if I follow the puppet strings, one way or another, I shall find the puppeteer.

But to observe properly, I need more light.

Once all three candles are blazing, I make a thorough search of the dolls’ house itself, running my hands along the walls and floors and roof.

I press. I poke. I even peel back wallpaper and pry up floorboards.

Nothing.

I examine doll-Holmes and doll-Watson.

Nothing.

I place the dolls in their armchairs and set the whole tiny edifice on the landing at Watson’s bedroom door. Then I go back into the lumber room and study the table on which the house has rested.

Nothing.

Impossible!

Puppets must have strings!

The puppeteer must have some mechanism to move the dolls.

_Unless he is in here._

I blink into the shadows. The legs and arms of chairs, the sharp corners of trunks, the glass jars of ears, they menace in the candlelight. Whoever it is may well have been hiding in this jungle of discard and surplus, mocking me and tormenting Watson.

Frustration becomes rage.

“SHOW YOURSELF!”

I toss the table, first at the wall, then at the door; then I lean out and hurl it down the stairs. The crashing and bashing makes for a cacophony of violence.

My shrieks add to the chaos.

“WHERE ARE YOUR WIRES? YOUR THREAD? YOUR EVIL STRINGS?”

I run my hands along the walls. I even make and climb the shiftiest of makeshift ladders, candle in hand, to study the ceiling.

Nothing.

Nothing!

Nothing renews my ire. I tumble back to the floor and take my anger out on a trunk, the one Watson believes filled with poison, but is, in fact, heavy with tiresome scholarship and tedious manuscript. I sling it into the wall below the shelves. It pops open. Paper vomits onto the floor.

I throw again, out of sheer perversion, at the shelves, the shelves with the ears.

“I KNOW YOUR GAME AND I WILL FIND YOU!”

Glass jars shatter and spill their contents. The scent of pungent preservative fills the air. It is joined by smoke as a candle singes something.

I throw open every trunk, pry open every box large enough to conceal even an infant-sized villain. The room does not afford proper space, so I begin to launch things down the stairs.

“ARE YOU HERE, FIEND?”

I feel the walls once more.

“WHERE IS YOUR TRICK?”

“Holmes, stop.”

I stop. I turn.

Watson.

And his revolver.

* * *

Holmes stops. He turns.

“Are you luring me here to kill me, Holmes?”

“Why do you require a witness to your suicide, Watson?”

“Suicide?” I snort.

He presses his lips together. “Are you intending to take your own life, Watson?”

“Do you not observe,” I sneer as I step forward, kicking aside blankets and pillows with a bare foot, “that the weapon is pointed at you, my dear man?”

“Answer the question, please. Have you plans to kill yourself?”

I laugh a bitter laugh. “No, sir.”

Oddly, his face softens at this. I continue.

“I survived your resurrection, Mary’s death, your death, bloody Afghanistan, medical school, a poverty stricken home with a pitiable father and gone-too-soon mother as well as an assorted number of minor miseries too fleeting and wretched to recount. My death will be your murder, Holmes, if you succeed.”

“Have you not been arranging the dolls in scenes depicting your suicide?”

“You’re mad!”

“I am not the one pointing the gun, Doctor,” he replies in a voice so much his usual, professional, before-madness tone that I want to cry. And surrender.

But I do not.

“No, you’re the one destroying the lumber room.” My eyes flit. “And a prize collection of ears.”

“The dolls’ house, Watson. What have you been seeing when you open it?”

I sigh. “All right. Let’s play ‘state the obvious.’ You have been arranging the dolls in scenes depicting my murder! The perfect murder! We joked about it and now you have seen fit to make truth of jest. Why I don’t know! Sport or some bizarre touch of monomania. The tainted nail—or rapier, because, even as a monomaniac, you bloody well cannot resist a touch of the dramatic—the hanging, the untraceable poison. But, I give you my word, Mister Sherlock Holmes, this gun will _not_ go off by accident! I will _fire_ it!”

His face is pale, but there is also a quickening light in his expression. It is a tired, worn version of the sleuthhound catching the first whiff of scent.

The sun rises, and a light, warmer and surer than fizzling candlelight, begins to flood the space between us.

“Watson, when I open the dolls’ house I have been seeing scenes of your suicide, scenes I believed that you yourself arranged. I have been endeavouring to prevent those scenes from becoming reality.”

“LIAR!”

“That’s why I took the rope and the chair. The rapier was a genuine accident. The sleeping powder a horrendous misjudgment because I saw your doll form drinking poison in the dolls’ house kitchen.”

“LIAR! The dolls’ foretold the rapier. You must have done it. And why won’t it heal?”

Holmes lifts his hands to destruction around him.

“I don’t know the answer to the last question but I am not lying. I have been searching for the wires, the strings, the something with which the dolls might be moved. I have even been looking for the villain responsible hidden here. I can find nothing.”

“Because there’s nothing to find. The blackguard is you! And it is only your own warped mind that tells you differently! I put the dolls back in their chairs after your doll stabbed mine with the rapier. That is the only time I have moved them.”

He sighs. “And yet by the time I saw it, while you were in your bedroom, dressing your wound, your doll form had hanged himself, the green velvet chair felled beneath him, and my doll form felled with shock outside the door. That’s why I took the rope, that’s why I took the chair, I swear. I have only moved the dolls twice, once after the hanging scene and once just now after seeing our double death by gunshot. I put the dolls back in their chairs both times.”

I shake my head. “You are a liar. Liars lie.”

He steps toward me.

My arm is shaking with pain and fear, but my decision is firm.

I _will_ shoot him.

“You are a not murderer, Watson. The greatest tragedy of this affair would be if a child’s plaything made you one and brought about your hanging after all. And then even greatest detective in the world would not be able to rescue you from the gallows.”

His lunge does not surprise me. I twist away.

Four hands are on the gun.

We struggle.

“LIAR!” I cry and fire.

BAM!

Ceiling dust rains down on us.

We freeze.

I stare. He stares.

He’s not hurt. Neither am I.

Hot metal sears my hand. Acrid smoke fills my nostrils.

Holmes’s own nostrils flare as he whispers, “I only lied about the name of the song, Watson. It’s not called _The Perfect Murder_ at all. It has always been called _John’s Song_. The other was my own spur-of-the-moment invention to avoid,” his cheeks pink in the ever-brightening morning light, “embarrassment.”

My body hums.

_This is truth._

I look into Holmes’s grey eyes and, suddenly, know three things. One, that the Holmes in my heart is the Holmes before me. And, two, that for which I hoped, but never dared to suggest aloud, is truth.

Reciprocated, requited, resolved.

But, three, I also know that now is not the hour for confessions.

There is a much more pressing matter.

“The dolls have been moving. Or moved,” I say.

“Yes!” he sighs. Relief smooths the lines of his face.

“How?” I query.

“I do not know.”

“By themselves?”

“No, that would defy—"

“All right. Forget ‘how.’ Why?”

“I do not know, Watson.”

“How can _you_ not know? I might have killed you, Holmes!”

One corner of his mouth twitches. His breath, sour with tobacco, caresses my cheek.

“Bricks and clay, my dear Watson. And your latter statement is true, but thankfully, you, that is to say, we, have, only made an unseemly hole in Mrs. Hudson’s ceiling.”

My head spins at how near I came, now near I was driven to killing the man I love. And, for some reason unknown to me, I suddenly think of Colonel Carruthers.

Finally, I say,

“It is an evil spirit that is responsible for this, something that seeks our mutual demise.”

Holmes snorts.

I do not.

“When you eliminate the impossible, Holmes…”

He sobers. And frowns.

“No, Watson. There must be a physical cause.” He releases his grip on the gun and turns. Then he crosses back into the lumber room and looks ‘round and overhead. “And it must be here, somewhere.”

I look over my shoulder, wincing at the pain that is making itself known once more.

“Holmes, how did you leave the dolls?”

“As I said, in the armchairs before the hearth.”

“Then they should be like that now. And if they are not…”

I meet his gaze.

“You believe me?” he asks.

I smile. “You aren’t planning the perfect murder? And flight? Your suitcase suggests otherwise.”

His face reddens. Then he shrugs. “That was a reaction to our conversation at the grave, a decision that I reconsidered almost at once. And I’ve been too distracted by subsequent events to pay it any mind.”

This is truth.

I nod, then tip my chin towards the dolls’ house and say,

“Shall we?”

“Together,” he insists.

What comedy! Two men of our age, squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder on the short landing, each with a hand on a small door, bending far lower than was comfortable for either of us, peering inside a miniature house.

We swing the door open.

“Watson—”

“Oh, no you don’t, you little bastards!”

* * *

The frayed threads of reason and reserve snap.

A florid, romantic statement, yes, one that, had it or something similar been included one of Watson’s accounts of our adventures, would have certainly elicited a word of rebuke from me.

Nevertheless, it is precisely what occurs when Watson takes in the scene.

On the landing, doll-Watson stands over a prone doll-Holmes, with the revolver pressed to the back of latter’s head—and a boot on his neck.

Watson slams the door of the dolls’ house, then wraps his arms around the edifice, groaning as he rights himself and turns.

I slip between Watson and the stairs.

“Get out of my way, Holmes!”

I do not, in fact, get out of his way.

I back down the stairs as he advances, looking over my shoulder to avoid, or in one case, surmount, the many obstacles in our path.

My slippers are unhelpful, to say the least, and I discard them mid-journey.

Watson’s face is now nearly purple.

“What are you going to do?” I cry, because truly I do not know at this point.

He spits and shakes and snorts.

“I shan’t let this evil thing plague us anymore! It lies! And it means to drive us mad! And make murderers of us both! Move!”

I assume he will pause, if for nothing but to catch a ragged breath, when we finally clear the streams of lumber room debris and make our way between the settee and armchair.

But no, once in the sitting room, he increases speed.

And at the very, very last moment I stumble aside, avoiding the fate of the dolls’ house.

CRASH!

Cold wind slaps me hard, shards of glass cut my face, but I grab Watson before he, too, goes flying out the shattered window.

There are shrieks in the streets.

We look down.

“Dear God,” I breathe.

The dolls’ house has landed, quite safely, on a large bed of straw in a country cart that is making its way very slowly through the recently ploughed street. Besides cargo and a driver, the cart also bears two passengers, a pale, weary slab of an old woman and a little girl, who squeals, not in terror, or pain of injury.

But in delight.

“A dolls’ house, Mummy! Sent from heaven! To me!”

“My dear, I don’t know—” murmurs the old woman.

“I can keep it! They threw it away! The little girl points up at us. “It came to me! It wants to come home with me!”

“ _MISTER HOLMES! MISTER WATSON!”_

Watson and I jump at the sound of Mrs. Hudson’s voice, but Watson rushes past her, down the stairs into the street. And there’s nothing for it but to mumble an apology and follow.

“All it wants is love, Mummy!” cries the little girl.

The mother tut-tuts. “But it’s so fine, my dear, surely they want it back—"

“ _DIDN’T YOU GET MY TELEGRAM, MISTER HOLMES?_ _NO, I SEE IT’S BEEN KICKED DOWN THE HALL!”_

“Sirs?” the old woman asks, turning to us, a plaintive appeal in her tired, watery eyes.

“They can’t love it!” the little girl whines. “They don’t know what love is. They threw it away.”

“ _HOW OLD IS THIS BREAKFAST? MICH! RATS!_ _AND_ _MY CHAIR! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY CHAIR?_ ”

“Take it!” I call to the old woman.

I look at Watson. He nods and waves for the driver to move on. “It’s yours.”

The old woman smiles. “Oh, thank you, sirs. And may God bless you for the rest of your days.”

“But, Mummy, I don’t want these dolls. They’re horrid. Oh, I want two very nice dolls, with long, long hair, one with a yellow dress, one with a blue dress, and…”

“ _THE LUMBER ROOM! WHAT’S ALL THIS MESS? AND WHAT’S THAT SMELL? DEAR HEAVENS, EARS!_ ”

The cart rolls on.

I look at Watson again, but he’s staring at the ground.

Where doll-Watson and doll-Holmes lay side-by-side on a mound of filthy snow.

With hands overlapping.

And there, in the middle of Baker Street, in bare feet and dressing gowns, with neighbours’ eyes and an impatient hansom cab barreling down on us, Watson takes my hand in his.

And squeezes it.

I squeeze back and swing ‘round him.

And we walk back inside together, only pausing when he whispers,

“Hotel room, Holmes?”

“On the Continent. Just until the glazier has finished repairs, but not until you’ve had a specialist look at that wound.”

He nods. “And I suppose a proper holiday for Mrs. Hudson, too?”

“Oh, yes.”

“ _GENTLEMEN, I COULD MURDER YOU BOTH!_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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